Watertown, Mass.-based Enanta Pharmaceuticals stands to gain more than $40 million in the coming months in milestone payments from partner AbbVie when the drug giant applies for approval of its pill-based treatment for the most common form of hepatitis C.

That would add to the $112 million in cash the company had as of last September in its most recent quarterly filing. If approved in the U.S. and in selected other countries, Enanta would get up to $155 million more in milestones on top of that, plus royalties.

Today, Enanta’s stock was up 15 percent as of noon to $37 a share after AbbVie reported positive results from the final four out of six late-stage trials of a combination of drugs intended to treat hepatitis C caused by genotype 1. One of the four drugs in that combination is Enanta’s ABT-450. AbbVie also said it now plans to submit an application for approval of the drug to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of June, and expects approval before the end of the year.

The six Phase 3 trials included 2,308 patients from more than 25 countries.

AbbVie is among a handful of companies racing to get approval of all-oral treatments for the infectious disease that don’t include interferon, which causes flu-life side effects. In December, Gilead’s drug, Sovaldi, was the first such drug approved in the U.S. It is one of a two-pill treatment Gilead is developing for hepatitis C, with the other one is expected to be approved later this year or early in 2015.

Jay Luly, president and CEO of Enanta Pharmaceuticals, said in an email that in addition to the $195 million in potential milestones, the company is entitled to tiered, double-digit royalties “ranging from the low double-digits to high teens” on net sales of the drug combination.

“Now that topline results have been released for all six Phase 3 studies, we can clearly see how this regimen performs in very specific patient populations, all of which are in the large genotype 1 market,” Luly said in the email.

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